Building Family Recovery in Newham

26 Oct 2018

Since our launch in May 2018, it's been really buzzing within our Newham Building Family Recovery Project. Our youth club in Forest Gate meets every Friday after school with a range of workshops and activities including art, poetry and even graffiti! Our poetry workshop, run by special guest Jamal Khan, was particularly popular with our young members producing some amazing pieces of poetry on a range of topics from families, football, food and love to youth violence and homelessness.

Young people in the group and families also enjoyed a VIP Madame Tussauds experience and organised their own Anti-Stigma Talent Show. This featured singers, dancers and spoken word artists before the main event; an anti-stigma fashion walk performed by young people to raise awareness of stigma and support Adfam’s campaign #StigmaMakesMeFeel.

Thanks to Stephen Timms MP for his support on the night and a special thank you to Jamal who hosted the event, and to his friends who came over from different parts of London to perform. Their poems on stigma and social issues really resonated with the audience.

Jamal is an award-winning writer & performer who is currently on a promo tour for his debut book ‘Words Within Walls’, a collection of journals he kept whilst in prison, touching upon everything from his personal struggles with mental health and how he used writing as a form of therapy, to the excessive levels of violence and suicide within our criminal justice system. He’s launching his book at City Hall on 29th November, find out more by emailing Jamal: Jamal-khan1@outlook.com.

In addition to the above achievements, we’ve also held a series of workshops for practitioners working with parents, young people, and families in Newham across a range of different services including mental health, domestic violence, education and employment. This has included Hidden Harm training, Alcohol Identification and Brief Advice (IBA) and Blue Light Manual Training run by our consultant Mike Ward. We are also in the process of partnering with CGL Newham Rise to extend their family services from Canning Town to Stratford and Manor Park.

Looking ahead we will be piloting our Youth Ambassador programme to train young people in Newham in communication and campaigning, and raising awareness of the harms of substance misuse. Please check out Adfam’s Twitter page as we will be tweeting weekly updates from Newham.

There are many more exciting things to come, so please watch this space. If you have any families in Newham affected by a loved one’s substance misuse please do get in touch.